5. All those times I was lying in bed at night, about to fall asleep, and it felt like someone (OR SOMETHING?!?!?) was applying gentle pressure to my ear with one finger.*****

*This happened one winter night while my husband and a friend were moving our old refrigerator out of the house, so I checked to see if they had left the front door open. THEY HADN’T. I walked back downstairs. The cold spot was still there, on the third step — and I panicked, naturally assuming that I had just passed through some dead person’s cloud of ghost molecules. It was only a few minutes later when I realized the back door was standing open. So, pretty sure it was just that.

**When I actually looked into the other room, I quickly noticed the cat’s bony ass was pressing the music buttons on the Thomas book. But in that brief five-second lag between hearing the music and seeing the cat, I immediately thought “GHOSTS.”

***I’d been thinking about him a lot at the time, so I assumed this was my late grandfather hanging around because he wanted to meet the new baby. I said, “Grandpa, I’m happy to have you here anytime, but please don’t scare the baby.” AND THE BABY NEVER CRIED AGAIN. (lol jk it’s almost two years later and this kid still cries literally all the time) (still could’ve been my grandpa though, never been debunked)

****Nothing else scary ended up happening that night, except for the fact that this post I wrote within 15 minutes easily outperformed pieces that have taken me three or four times longer to compose.

*****I have TMJ, right? So yeah, I clench my jaw a lot, and it’s not unusual for me to feel muscle pressure and twitches around the general neighborhood of my ear. Counterpoint: Don’t you think I know the difference between the spasming of an over-stressed muscle and somebody poking me in the goddamn ear? This feels like somebody poking me in the goddamn ear. Again, never been debunked. The truth is out there.

I know this wasn’t The Point of this post but isn’t that always the case about the quick/”throw-away”/15-minutes-to-write posts? That they are more beloved that you’d ever expect? Something must loosen up. Or something technical like that.

No. 2 is so similar to my experience. My son used to have this ‘Finding Nemo’ toy. It was a little toy Nemo fish. When you poked it, it would give out that sweet little chuckle that Nemo does in the movie. It’s not so sweet at two in the morning. By itself. 3 times. In the empty bathroom across from our room. I don’t know where the fish went after that, but safe to say that no-one ever saw it again. I also had my butt tweaked in that same bathroom one evening & turned, expecting to see my partner, but there was no-one there! But the fish was probably the scariest thing we have had happen.